The Empathy Gap, Hero Culture, and the Myth of Radical Transparency
When empathy only exists in your mission statement
It was a Monday morning, and I was reading an email from a startup founder. They were looking for a consultant to help with their internal communications and team morale. Their pitch was filled with all the right buzzwords: "empathy-driven," "people-first culture," and "radical transparency." They had a mission statement that read like a poem about human connection. But as I read on, a different picture emerged.
Their team was burned out. Their support staff was quitting in droves. Their engineering team was in a perpetual state of "crunch mode." They were building a product for people, but they were treating their own people like cogs in a machine. The founder was so focused on the customer experience that they had completely neglected the employee experience.
This isn't an isolated story. I see it all the time in the startup world. A company's website talks about how much they care about their users, but their internal communication is a mess of passive-aggressive emails and misaligned goals. They post on LinkedIn about their "vibrant" company culture, but the reality is a Discord channel filled with people working late into the night.
It’s easy to write the word "empathy" in your mission statement. It’s much harder to live it out when deadlines are looming and investors are asking for growth.
The Empathy Gap
The gap between a company's stated values and its actual behavior is what I call the empathy gap. This gap is what causes good people to leave, what kills morale, and what ultimately leads to a subpar product. You can't build a product that is truly empathetic to its users if the people building it are miserable.
So, how do you fix it? You start by looking inward. Here are three places where the empathy gap often shows up:
1. The Internal vs. External Disconnect
Your company’s public-facing values must align with your internal culture. If you claim to be "people-first," but your employees are afraid to take a sick day, you have a problem. True empathy starts at home. You have to care for your employees first. This means providing fair compensation, reasonable working hours, and a psychologically safe environment where people can speak up without fear of reprisal.
2. The Communication Trap
Many startups believe that being "radically transparent" means sharing every single piece of information, regardless of context. This can lead to anxiety and information overload. True empathy in communication isn't about telling people everything; it's about giving them the right information at the right time. It's about listening more than you talk. It's about asking, "What do you need to know to do your best work?"
3. The "Hero" Culture
Startups often glorify the "hero" who works all weekend to fix a bug or the "rockstar" who pulls an all-nighter to launch a new feature. This kind of culture is a direct threat to empathy. It creates an environment where burnout is seen as a badge of honor and self-care is viewed as a weakness. An empathetic culture celebrates sustainable work and recognizes that the best ideas often come from well-rested, happy people, not exhausted heroes.
The hard truth is that empathy is not a mission statement. It's a daily practice. It's a series of small, intentional choices about how you treat the people around you. It’s about listening when you’d rather talk. It’s about being patient when you’d rather rush. It’s about understanding that the person on the other end of the email—whether they’re a customer or an employee—is a human being with their own struggles and frustrations.
And the best part? When you close the empathy gap, you'll find that your product and your company will be all the better for it.